Tag Archives: Legend of the Sword

Did we need another King Arthur movie? Of course not. But I certainly didn’t mind one, especially if it’s directed by Guy Ritchie. I thought applying Ritchie’s frenetic pace and direction to this re-envisioning of the class tale might deliver a fun, action-packed experience in the vein of his Sherlock Holmes franchise. Unfortunately, Ritchie missed the mark.

Legend of the Sword does have some good things going for it. Ritchie infuses his unique style, visuals and colour palette to the King Arthur world, and you end up with a lot of wild sequences of characters running around and chirping slick dialogue in thick accents. The action is pretty fantastic too, especially all the fights and battle scenes with Excalibur. Reminded me a lot of the stylized scenes from 300, with lots of speed manipulation but less blood. The film actually looks and feels like a video game a lot of times, in a good way. And David Beckham even has a cameo!

But sadly, Legend of the Sword just doesn’t feel right. It just doesn’t come together the way it should have. For starters, as much as I like him, Charlie Hunnam feels all wrong as Arthur. He’s just…too old? He starts off as a little kid, and not that many years later, he morphs into Hunnam, who is 37 in real life (and looks it) but is supposed to be in his early 20s in the movie. As a result, he doesn’t have that youthful vibe Arthur ought to have.

Secondly, the story picks and chooses from the Arthur legend but does it in a weird way. There’s the sword of course and mention of Mordred, but Merlin is nowhere to be seen and Arthur is raised in a brothel but somehow is also taught to be a badass by a bunch of warriors. The main baddie is Jude Law’s Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, who makes a deal with some weird demonic creature that looks creepy and fantastic but is never explained. There are also these giant elephants that are clearly ripped off from Lord of the Rings.

Thirdly, the story itself is just not very interesting. After an explosive start, the majority of the middle of the film sags as Arthur and his mates run around trying to escape enemies and forge a plan. Arthur has some character development moments, but he’s never particularly relatable. There’s some humour throughout, though I wouldn’t call it particularly funny.

On the whole, Legend of the Sword is probably better than its 28% rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggests and more deserving of its $97m box office against a $175m budget. It has nice visuals and action, and Guy Ritchie fans will appreciate his sensitivities in the direction, but the film is too strangely mediocre in terms of plot and engagement for me to recommend it.